


Memorial

by DoodlesOfTheMind



Category: Naruto
Genre: Comrades, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Kaka/Ita and Shi/Ita if you squint, Loss, memorial stone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 02:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2634968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoodlesOfTheMind/pseuds/DoodlesOfTheMind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been three years since the Uchiha Massacre, three years since Uchiha Shisui gave his life to protect his village and his truest friend. And three years that Itachi has lived as a criminal, wracked with guilt and sorrow. He returns to Konoha in the dead of night, finding himself mimicking his former ANBU Captain as he stares at a stone obelisk in the woods. He knows Shisui's name won't be there, that a soldier who had taken his own life wouldn't be memorialized, but he never thought it would hit him quite this hard...or that someone else would understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memorial

Kakashi watched from the trees as a young man knelt before the Memorial Stone. His dark hair was longer than Kakashi remembered, the ends of his bangs jagged and uneven where they fell around his face. The rest of it was pulled back into a low tail that fell just below his shoulder blades. His black coak bore a distinctive pattern of red clouds, but that wasn’t what Kakashi saw, not really. To him, the fabric was heavy and worn, and the loose draping concealed what he knew would still be narrow shoulders, a trim waist, and long legs just now losing the coltishness of youth. At sixteen, Uchiha Itachi was not just a man. He was ancient.

“What are you doing here, kid?” Kakashi asked softly.

The other man didn’t move other than bow his head a little further, and to brush his fingers over the smooth area near the base of the stone, where no characters had yet been carved. “His name isn’t there.” It was no longer the quiet, serious voice of a child veteran. His murmur was rich and low and full of pain.

“No,” Kakashi said as he dropped to the earth. “Yours won’t be, either.”

“His name should be there.” Not a complaint, not a protest. Just a statement of fact.

Kakashi stood over his onetime comrade, and his hand moved of its own accord to rest on the boy’s back. “Give me his blade.”

Itachi looked up, then, eyes gleaming with the light of the Sharingan, and with tears that would never be shed. A question formed on his lips, and disappeared as one hand vanished into his cloak. Slowly, Itachi lifted a narrow bundle swathed in white silk. He bared his throat as he offered it to his former Captain with both hands, a silent plea, and an unspoken promise.

Kakashi took it reverently, unwrapping the simple tanto that anyone who had come near its former owner knew was a family heirloom passed down through eight generations of Uchiha shinobi, father to son. The ninth man to bear that weapon had no claim to it, but then, no one did, now. Perhaps it wasn’t so unfitting that it had rested on Itachi’s hip for three long years, taking the place of a wandering hand that had so often found itself in that same spot.

The blade left its sheath without a sound. It was dull grey steel, brushed and lacquered so it wouldn’t reflect the light and betray its owner’s position in the darkness. Itachi’s eyes never left it, even as his chin lifted another inch, supplication and demand.

Kakashi knelt before him, setting the sheath aside. “He wouldn’t want this for you.” His fingertips brushed over Itachi’s pale cheek. Too pale, gaunt from stress and pain. “I don’t want this for you.”

“Please, Taichou.” The words were less than a breath.

Cautiously, Kakashi took Itachi’s wrist and raised it between them, settling the hilt of the tanto in his palm and folding his fingers around it. Itachi flinched as if it were a hot coal, eyes closing and shoulders rocking back in a silent sob. “Shh,” Kakashi said, though the boy made no further sound. “Let me help you.”

Kakashi’s broad, callused hand covered Itachi’s, his thumb gently circling until he felt the tension flow out of Itachi’s arm. There was no resistance as Kakashi guided the blade up, but Itachi’s eyes snapped open in shock when the point made contact. Itachi’s hand stayed limp as Kakashi dragged the blade across, steel biting into the stone with ease. He lifted it, settled it a bit lower, and turned Itachi’s wrist to form a curve beneath the first incision. He lifted the blade again, and etched another deep horizontal line underneath it, and then completed the character with a downward slash, and another, smaller curve. As he began the downward stroke to form the third character, his eyes were on Itachi’s, and he felt the boy’s fingers twitch along with his as they completed the loop at the bottom of the second portion together.

Kakashi paused, but Itachi’s hand was already in motion, making two little strokes and a shallow, slanted curve. Kakashi let his hand rest lightly over Itachi’s as the fifth character was carved, no longer directing, only steadying Itachi as he trembled. The first curving stroke of the final character brought a low gasp from Itachi’s throat, and a single tear fell, matching the downward line as Itachi completed the name.

 

う

ち

は

シ

ス

イ

  
  
  
  



End file.
